I’m sitting here in Keflavik airport on a Tuesday afternoon, waiting for a flight back to the US. I stopped here for a couple of days on the way home from Dublin, and I’m glad I did. When you fly into Iceland, the first thing you see is the huge lava field of the southwest coast. It’s a broad, flat plain of lichen-covered rock, with huge swaths of purple. The color comes from Alaska lupine flowers, brought to the island in 1945. There are now millions of them along the coast and in the interior plains and valleys. They seem to grow even in the stoniest soil.

I arrived in Dublin on June 12 for the 2016 Open Repositories conference at Trinity College. By coincidence, my brother Paul arrived the same day from Seattle, on unrelated work, and had a room in the same hotel, two doors down the hall from mine. We met in the lobby around 5pm and were approached immediately by a drunk American woman in her 60s who asked Paul where his wife was. When he said she was at home, the woman said, “Well then, maybe you’d like to join me for a drink.” (She already had one in her hand.) Paul said no thanks, and the woman turned to me and asked where my wife was. Also at home. She invited me for drink, but I declined. Then she started cursing the “eighty year old losers” in her tour group and walked off, but not before reminding us both that we could find her at the pub next door at 8pm.

The pub next door was The Bleeding Horse, though the sign says something a little different.

This story follows Robert Syverton and Gloria Beatty, a pair of young people struggling to survive as extras in depression-era Hollywood. A day or so after meeting, they enter a dance marathon, partly in hopes of winning the $1000 prize, and partly for the promise of free food, which they get as long as they continue dancing.

Thomas Ripley is a petulant, emotionally stunted young man with a victim mentality, a colossal inferiority complex, and uncontrollable feelings of resentment and envy. He’s not likable, but Patricia Highsmith writes well enough to make you understand and even identify with his feelings, and to make you care what happens to him. Though the novel is narrated in third person, Ripley’s undulating moods color the description of every scene and character.

The other day, I was trying to buy a new phone and sign up for a mobile service plan online. I added a phone to my cart, and then when I selected a payment method, the page disappeared, and I found myself looking at a different page full of phones I didn’t want.

“OK,” I said. “Let’s try that again.”

Last week, I asked readers to vote on a blurb for my next book, Impala.

Two thirds of the respondents favored the “Summary” blurb, which described the main character and his predicament in straight expository prose. One third preferred the “Flavor” blurb that gave a good sense of the books’ style and tone, and encouraged the reader to piece together what the book was about.

This seems like the prototype of American crime/noir novels. At just about 100 pages, it’s quite short. Cain doesn’t waste any time in getting to the story, or any words in telling it. In fact, many of the chapters read like a screenplay, with lots of dialog and little or no narrative. The dialog isn’t even tagged, meaning there’s no “he said” or “she replied.” Sometimes you have to back up half a page and re-read, just to keep track of who said what.

This brilliant and original book is deeply disturbing, and at times difficult to read because of its dark subject matter and its portrayal of violence, cruelty, and destruction. I won’t go too far into the plot, since the book summary and many other reviews cover that.

In short, a young man who has become alienated from his job, his culture and himself starts “fight club,” where guys take out their frustrations by beating the hell out of each other. After fight clubs spring up in a number of cities, the members start Project Mayhem, which is an attempt to force their violence on all of society and to destroy civilization itself through a series of small, vicious, petty, spiteful destructive acts.

Although the plot is a bit clumsy and farfetched in places, this is still an excellent book. As usual with Thompson, he wastes no time getting the story started. Frank “Dolly” Dillon spies the woman who will will be his undoing in the first sentence of the book, and by the end of the first chapter, you know that these particular characters meeting under these particular circumstances are bound for trouble.

Thompson is simply brilliant at conveying how character and circumstance combine to form destiny. And he does it in simple, straightforward language, with no wasted words, no precious metaphor or long-winded descriptions. He simply takes you by degrees down into hell, and by the time you realize where you’re going, it’s too late to turn back.

What do you try to accomplish in your writing?

The first thing, I guess, is to write something I would like to read. I like books that make me think and feel. I like books that are emotionally and intellectually honest, that tell a good story, but also strive for depth. I like to see the author’s heart in their work, and to get a sense of the flavor of their mind. So I try to put all that in my work.